JBL Link View Vs Amazon Echo Show Best Smart Assistant Speaker 2019

If you’re looking for a smart assistant to put in your home, you have at least two pretty good options — Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. Both are advanced smart assistants that make it easy to accomplish menial tasks, but they’re also both very different. Google Assistant takes on an AI-first approach — which does bring some privacy concerns with it — and Amazon Alexa has a massive community behind it, building all sorts of skills and abilities to expand the smart assistant with.

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That said, you have to be careful about the types of smart assistant speakers that you buy — some are loaded with Google Assistant and others have Amazon Alexa. That’s the case with the JBL Link View and Amazon Echo Show — one is loaded with Google Assistant and the other has Amazon Alexa, respectively. So is there one that’s better than the other? Follow along below and we’ll show you the pros and cons of both!

First up, we’re looking at the Google Assistant powered JBL Link View. One of the unique things about the JBL Link View is that it has an 8-inch touchscreen to expand the features of Google Assistant. It makes it a little more practical and versatile in what it can do.

Since it does have Google Assistant built inside, you will be able to use all of the typical commands with it, such as “Hey Google, how’s the weather?” or “Hey Google, what’s on my calendar this weekend?” or even “Hey Google, how old was Abraham Lincoln when he died?” However, with extra functions like the 8-inch touchscreen display, you can now tell Google to start a video call with a friend or family member. In addition to that, you can pull up YouTube videos while you’re cooking, or even watch a movie on the JBL Link View, if you so choose! Google Assistant can even pull up a video feed of the baby room or other security cameras you have around your home!

While all of the things the JBL Link View can do is super cool, there have always been some privacy concerns when it comes to Google Assistant. It has an AI-first approach, so the digital assistant is always trying to learn things about you to make your Google Assistant experience more contextual and efficient. That’s not something everybody likes, so if privacy is something you’re concerned about, you might want to look instead on what the Amazon Echo Show has to offer.

Amazon Alexa has been around a lot longer than Google Assistant, so it’s given plenty of time for the Amazon Alexa community to build all sorts of new skills and abilities for the digital assistant. All of those can be found in the Amazon Echo Show (you just have to go online and pick and choose which ones you want to add to your Alexa assistant!).

The Echo Show is just a little better than the JBL Link View, as it has a 10.1-inch touchscreen instead of the 8-inch on the Google Assistant speakers. The Echo Show also has premium speakers and microphones for better listening capabilities and voice recognition. You can do everything that you might expect with Amazon Alexa, such as the ability to ask her what the weather looks like, what’s on your calendar, or even request her to start playing music. As you might imagine, with the 10.1-inch screen, you can ask her to make video calls as well and even pull up movies! Just like the Link View, Amazon Alexa with the Echo Show can pull up video feeds, too.

There’s always going to be privacy concerns when it comes to digital assistants, but Alexa is a little on the safer side. That said, it is more of a “plain” voice assistant, in that it won’t provide you with contextual information unique to you. Google Assistant can joke around really well with its AI technology, but Alexa’s “joking” is a little more pre-scripted.

Verdict

As you can see, there are both disadvantages and advantages to the JBL Link View and the Amazon Echo Show, and it mostly has to deal with the type of digital assistant you’re getting. However, we think Amazon really takes the cake here with Echo Show, simply because it comes with a larger and clearer screen, as well as better speakers and microphones.

Do you have a favorite digital assistant? Let us know in the comment section below.

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